I don’t know them, but I love them. From Wikimedia Commons. Searched for “Bridesmaids Beach”, hoping for something correlating to my post. Lovely.

Bigger than George Clooney’s marriage. Bigger than my son eating cheese flavored Chex Mix for the first time yesterday (wish it had been broccoli, but at least he’s branching out…double edged sword, this pickiness business), bigger than the beachwalk I recently embarked upon (despite that walk’s inspiring company and wave-racing doggie),bigger than organic jumbo free range cage free chicken eggs or George Washington Carver’s numerous inventions with the peanut. Sorry, no—not bigger than anything to do with GWC. And never, of course (so obvious why write it) bigger than Jane Eyre. However, a new poem disrupted my life’s daily routine. Writing/revision and gym time were discarded. The dishwasher, stacked in soiled stuffs, remained silent. The turtle was placed into her daily bath, but cobwebs wafted freely from that super high place in the dining room. No worries. A new POEM. Odd that the poem has everything to do with the recent past vs. heart-pumping current events, but I’ll take the poem. Especially because I don’t roll my eyes upon reading it after avoiding it for 3 days.

I’ll take it.

I finished reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, am finishing up Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, both books prompting dreams centered around (what else) obstacles of survival: alien invasions (hiding simply best course of action here), Central Park in depths of night (pretty much as bad as alien invasions), and, last night, a nightmare involving a pack of bridesmaids trotting gaily down a sunny beach backed by treacherous, crumbling cliffs only I noticed and was promptly, upon noticing, navigating in a red, silky strapless dress, barefoot. I woke up with my breath a claw in my throat and a sense of cliff dust on my soles. My first thought was: Dammit, these are clean sheets.

Poem, poem: I’m doing my best by you. Hang in there. And I will, too.